Tim Wynveen made a stunning fiction debut with his critically acclaimed novel Angel Falls, winner of the 1998 Commonwealth Writer's Prize. Balloon, his eagerly anticipated second novel, establishes him as a major talent in North American fiction. A powerful novel that captures brilliantly the moral and emotional compass of our times, Balloon tells the story of Charles Parker Martingale, a successful man whose life, before his very eyes and despite his best intentions, comes apart. A partner in a profitable software firm, involved in a stable relationship, Parker is living a potent version of the baby-boomer dream. But all that is about to change. On the first anniversary of his mother's death, his father announces his intention to marry an old flame with whom, it turns out, he has another son, born a year before Parker. Before he realizes it, his world, both at home and at work, begins rapidly and inevitably to fall away. In the strange and remarkable tale of Parker and the unforgettable characters who come and go in his world, Tim Wynveen paints with humour and heartbreaking clarity a deeply affecting portrait of the way we live now, and the greater lives to which we all aspire. (1999)